Amid the carnage wrought by his decision to start a global trade war and send the stock market plummeting, President Donald Trump experienced a personal victory after winning a round of golf at his own golf course.
On Saturday, Trump won the second-round matchup in a Senior Club Championship held at his very own Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, which means he advances to the Championship Round held on Sunday.
Many in the media were quick to highlight just how tone-deaf the announcement sounded at the end of a tumultuous week, including CNN’s Jake Tapper, who declared, “Great news, everybody!!!!!” while Meet the Press host Chuck Todd wrote on X, “Just astonishingly tone deaf. Crater the world economy then spend the weekend golfing against Washington General-like competitors. Seems fairly clear he’s not interested in running for any office again.”
Others drew comparisons between the announcement of Trump’s win at Trump’s own golf course and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, with The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell tweeting, “Our President crashed the economy at the end of the week and is spending the weekend golfing and putting ou[t] North Korea-style updates about it.”
Other X users circulated an image of Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as a Fox News newsreader dressed in a traditional Korean hanbok with Trump edited to look like Kim Jong Un, with the chyron reading, “Dear Leader won his second round matchup of the Senior Club Championship.”
Many compared Trump to other famously out-of-touch historical figures. CNN’s Ana Navarro-Cárdenas quipped, “Let them eat cake,” in reference to the quote misattributed to Marie Antoinette, while others shared an AI-generated image of Trump as Nero, who is known for fiddling as Rome burned.
The Atlantic’s David Frum compared Trump to another Roman leader, writing on X, “One of the emperor Augustus’s best tricks for legitimizing his authoritarian rule: he made a point of losing at games, joking about his bad luck, and paying his forfeits cheerfully. It made his reign look less arbitrary and terrifying to fellow members of the Roman elite.”
Despite the appeals to his base, Trump has never been a man of the people. But it’s clear that for many, golfing while the stock market crashes is a bridge too far, particularly once you factor in Trump’s decision to skip a ceremony for four fallen service members in order to play golf, opting to send Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in his stead.
Mediaite spoke to several veterans and their spouses, who were outraged at Trump’s decision not to visit Dover Air Force Base to witness the dignified transfer of four soldiers killed in a training exercise in Lithuania, with one veteran telling the outlet, “I can’t begin to express my disgust with what this admin is doing to the troops and the veterans… Coming home from dying in service and, ‘I’m going to hang out with the Saudis because of golf?’ I’m disgusted at a minimum.”
